it is very much there. the way i read it, at first it was the high elves that were the silmarillion elves archetype, from warcraft 2, but in warcraft 3, a lot of elven lore was fleshed out, this is when we found out what the high elves really were and the night ellves were introduced in the same story and much of their history given then, followed by their exploits in warcraft 3 - where they resembled the archetype of the silmarrillion elves more so than the high elves.

they are not identical, it's a different storoy, yes, night elves do have that aspect of them that is a twist on drow elves, but then drow elves are a twist on moriquendi elves of tolkein's universe anyway. and yes you have that amazon warrior thing to them as well, but.. fierce in battle they might be, savages they are not.

[snip]

this enitre post is a.. hey.. look how tolkein describes and writes the behaviour of beings that are many thousands of years old and still about. - you're to look at their character btw, not the details of the story. Look at how Tolkkein writes Elrond's speech and responses, or Glorfindels, look how though the elves are no longer playing a major role in the conflict and are diminishing, they are not useless or weak or inept, they just have different priorities now, which to understand you would have to read the other works. Elves played a mjaor role in the first and second ages.

anyway my point is, they should be wrtitten more like how Elrond, Galadriel, GAndalf, Sauron, Saruman, Glorfindel, Gilgalad etc are written like, not like how Tyrande is just fumbling infront of Varian, or how night elves appear more like insect pests to the orcs and goblins of northern kalimdor in the cataclysm quest chains.[COLOR="red"]

You can't say that the Drows were a twist on Tolkien's Moriquendi (Dark elves). In Tolkien, a Dark Elf is only an Elf that never saw the light of the Two Trees of Valinor. The Nandor (Sylvan Elves) and Sindar were Moriquendi, and they look nothing like Drows.

Also, the Eldar are what they are by nature, not only because they are immortal. Also Noldor are even wiser and more powerful than other Eldars because they came from Valinor. There are also lots of examples of flawed and reckless Eldars, even foolish. Feanor and his sons come to mind, as is Saeros who provoked the wrath of Turin Turambar, the singing elves who threw jokes at the dwarves in The Hobbit, or the jail wardens in Thranduil's palace who let themselves get drunk.

The Kaldorei never had a similar experience as Valinor. Also, even if they are old, their experience is limited to what they knew in Kalimdor. Contrary to the Eldar, they lived secluded from other races, so their knowledge about them is also limited. The Kaldorei lived a period of stagnation during the Long Vigil. Tyrande is probably unmatched in guerilla warfare, but not so good in large scale conflicts and siege. Therefore, she still can learn from Varian who did all of those. So, even if some Kaldorei could be like Elrond or Galadriel (in certain ways), most of them would not. Malfurion is probably the closest to be like Elrond : a wise loremaster.

which is why i never stated they were identical, something people are putting in my mouth, i was very careful throughout this topic to point out what was similar about them, always stating that it is how tolkein portrays very long lived and well accomplished beings is what the blizzard writers should take note off

my whole arguement is that they are writing the night elves very poorly. when you look at Tyrande in wolfheartor in MoP, she's an idiot, her actions, and those of the night elves you encounter in the horde questline of the kalimdor zones or even the alliance quest lines, do not resemble those of beings who have lived thousands of years long and accomplished great feats like defeating the legion, twice, winning satyr wars, war of the shifting sands, guided the evolution of the world, masked an entire continent physcially and magically, , evolved beyond simple mortal lusts of welath and land acquistion etc etc.. they've laid out the night elves history, and we liked it, i didn't do that, I didn't make the night elves, nor write their history, they did. It's there for all of us to see, they bragged about them in warcraft 3 and most of wow till all that troll stuff started coming in and cataclysm was released/ they made them immortal not I - they made them incredibly wise and powerful and fierce, with an almost savage but highly intelligent and organised discipline when in battle yet serene and civlised and well cultutured, when not etc. Then they go and give us cataclsym and you are like..wtf is this?

when you write such a background, you expect when you encounter them in the warcraft universe that they would come out much more like Elrond/Galadrial/Gandalf/Glorfindel/Sauron/Faenor/Saruman and co etc than they would the bumbling Tyrande. My entire point is they don't seem to know how to realistically write the character of such beings anymore (maybe because different writers are writing the plotlines now for wow where the original writer that did WC3 no longer does), so, those new guys should take cue from how tolkein writes roles and speech and actions for the like of Elrond and co and the other long lived wise beings of middle earth whether good or bad.

i am not saying they are identical or their stories are the same, i never did, just pointing out that we're getting a lot of rubbish for night elves which doesn't match the profile and makes the story seem rather stupid, and i'm quite impressed how tolkein has gone about portryaing and representing immortal/long lived wise and powerful beings, in fact he does do that better than most fantasy genres, and i expect the likes of Tyrande and co to have a lot more similarity to them in personatliy and action than they have shown her and her night elves to have.

I get it ! have you seen how Tolkein writes elves in his story? that's how you expect Tryande and co to be more like. You expect them in MoP and cataclysm to have been more like that than what we get. But equally true is most players would be satisfied if they came off like they did in warcraft 3, which is a lot more like how the tolkein elves come off. in as much as they are both very tough, very smart, very good at what they do, and very hard to beat. they never do stupid things. They are killable, but it's damn hard, they know things and they are extremely skilled, a bit beyond human capability almost seeming super human but not being. They are not without flaws, but hey, you never have an easy time against them and you're likely to be beaten by them, winning against them you must have incredible odds stacked up against them, and then you barely succeed.

and when they talk, or give advise, they are always right, sure they don't know everything, but they'd be plain about that 0 look how Frodo's conversation with Gildor goes, or Elrond in the Rivendell meeting, or Strider and Glorfindel - well that's teh sort of tone you expect of a long lived being who's lived through several near world ending world wars over several millenia -- it's not hard to understand

They were getting overwhelmed until dragons decided to drag their sorry asses back to skies.

Wait, what?

If by masking, you mean leaving it as it is, then sure, nothing except Maelstrom was protecting Kalimdor from the east.

And yet first thing they are introduced doing was attacking peons, yeah...

really not going to argue with you on any of this, the history is there for all of us to see, ididnt' write it, they did, and they put the night elves as this incredible race of tolkein-esque like feats. not me. the stories may be different, but in the first age, the valar and the elves as well as all of middle earth and valar went to war against morgoth, tolkein's elves did not single handedly defeat morgoth in the first age, neither did the night elves singlehandeldy defeat the legion by a long shot, yet they played a central role and did many great feats and acts, just like the tolkein elves.

the second age war was not an elf solo effort either, no one said it was, i didn't, blizzards stories in the great wars teh elves won were almost never solo efforts nor was Tolkein's second age war where the last alliance of men and elves rose up against Sauron. Once again, what the stories tell off is the valiance and might of the elves who again play a central role, you people don't know tolkein elves cos you think they are some super perfect super saiyan rubbishly written mary sues like you read in Knaak's crap and then scorn them or despise them for it displaying your ignorance of both they and the author where if you'd had bothered to read you wouldn't be so disparaging.

i repeat i didn't write the story, they did. and you don't even know that the night elves have guided the evolution of the world for nearly 10,000 years with Ysera and her flight and amsked the entire continent of kalimdor both pyshcailly and magically? then you know little of that aspect of warcraft history. again, i didn't write the story, i'm just pointg out what blizzard themselves did, so don't pour your scorn on me. if you hate their "glorious" past, curse their makers for not making them dark and miserable and ordinary in their history. but you should be happy now, they are quite the idiots right now. which is what this is all about.

i repeat i didn't write the story, they did. and you don't even know that the night elves have guided the evolution of the world for nearly 10,000 years with Ysera and her flight and amsked the entire continent of kalimdor both pyshcailly and magically?

Again I ask you, how. They didnt affect evolution at all and only hidden continent was Pandaria.

As for other "feats", I just told that they had help almost every time. And that is no bullshit, thats official lore.

If anything, Night Elves should have been more like the Trolls of WoW, if going by the early artwork/lore and so on.

Feral, savage, merciless. Instead we get Elves that are actually very, very close to Tolkien's; peace-loving and largely useless.

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1." - Cranmer's Law

If anything, Night Elves should have been more like the Trolls of WoW, if going by the early artwork/lore and so on.

Feral, savage, merciless. Instead we get Elves that are actually very, very close to Tolkien's; peace-loving and largely useless.

shouldn't surprise you that he changed them, he did so several times, originally tha'ts what he wanted them to be, but he changed his mind, wanna bet he changed his mind about them again after warcraft 3? Elves coming from trolls for e.g. was not in the original script, you can almost trace the changes to the night elves made in the story after Warcraft 3's release to engineer the connection, including the changte to the troll model somewhere closer to the warcraft release date, then the changes to the lore. including the writing of troll lore which was originally post sundering, and then became pre-sundering.

i have been following warcraft since the very beginning, and read every comic, every book, every dev entry, behind the scenes talk, blizz con interviews and interactions with the developers. It's not the first time Chris has changed his mind about something or changed the history and direction of a race than what he had origianlly penned them to be.

You don't say!
What was he doing while Tyrande was fighting satyrs and Legion remnants for 10 000 years? Sleeping.
What was he doing while the War of the Shifting Sands was taking place? Sleeping.
What was he doing when orcs were killing Cenarius? Sleeping.
What was he doing when the Legion finally attacked? Sleeping, he needed Tyrande to save his ass.

Yeah, he was sleeping but he was the one who saved the world in the end anyway. Without him Tyrande would never have united with humans and orcs and noone would be able to kill Archimonde. There was a reason Tyrande had to wake him up.

Again I ask you, how. They didnt affect evolution at all and only hidden continent was Pandaria.

As for other "feats", I just told that they had help almost every time. And that is no bullshit, thats official lore.

and i told you just because you have help doesn't necessarily detract from the heroism and valour of your role, i did this by pointing out to you that the "glorious" elves of tolkein 's world i am making comparisons with the night elves had a lot of help in their amazing conflicts.

and they did guide the evolution of the world for nearly 10,000 years with Ysera, do you even know what the Emerlad dream does? go read up, and you'd do well to read more than wowpedia, go play warcraft 3, read the dev articles if you can find them, read the books. Kalimdor was magically masked, by the night elves and Cenarius, they did so from stone talon mountain, hid an entire continent, both physically and magically. The idea was so no one could come close and find the well of eternity and by so doing find magic. It is also why the night elves forbade any sentient race to cross Ashenvale's borders, because of the secret that lay atop Hyjal. They were taking no chances, not guarding their land, they were guarding the tree so the world would not stumble across magic and draw the legion again, and they did their job effectively.

and they did guide the evolution of the world for nearly 10,000 years with Ysera, do you even know what the Emerlad dream does? go read up, and you'd do well to read more than wowpedia, go play warcraft 3, read the dev articles if you can find them, read the books. Kalimdor was magically masked, by the night elves and Cenarius, they did so from stone talon mountain, hid an entire continent, both physically and magically. The idea was so no one could come close and find the well of eternity and by so doing find magic. It is also why the night elves forbade any sentient race to cross Ashenvale's borders, because of the secret that lay atop Hyjal. They were taking no chances, not guarding their land, they were guarding the tree so the world would not stumble across magic and draw the legion again, and they did their job effectively.

That is the very first time I heard that, the emerald dream is nothing but a dreamscape of the world how it would look like if no civilization had ever existed(a blue print so to speak). No druid can temper with it not even Ysera. Night elves went into seclusion for 10.000 years guarding their land, they shaped no other race and they did not hide Kalimdor. I might have missed something , If I have please provide the sources for your claims.

He who sees his own doom can better avoid its path. He who sees the doom of others can deliver it.

That is the very first time I heard that, the emerald dream is nothing but a dreamscape of the world how it would look like if no civilization had ever existed(a blue print so to speak). No druid can temper with it not even Ysera. Night elves went into seclusion for 10.000 years guarding their land, they shaped no other race and they did not hide Kalimdor. I might have missed something , If I have please provide the sources for your claims.

you're not wrong, but there is much more to the emerald dream. It is using that blueprint that Ysera, her flight and the night elven druids have guided the evolution of the world. there are many aspects of the Emerald dream, and many secrets about it, we do not fully understand it, nor does even Ysera. In Stormrage, we see Malfurion develop a mastery of it that seems to surpass even that of Ysera.

The lore is there, it isn't anything new. Blizzard originally presented the night elves as an extraordinary people. It's no surprise their very ordinariness of recent patches is frustrating their fans so. It is also stupid to start back peddling to try and prove they were nothing spectacular because they certainly wrote them in with achievements and stature that surpassed anything they had introduced amongst the humanoid races. Even now, no race seems to have come close to what the night elves have done in warcraft history.

and is probably why the night elves are the go to group when blizzard want to show how awesome and badass a race is or new individual is, they have to write in some humiliation of the night elves, which most fans would agree is a poor and deplorable way of doing things that just makes them look like bad writers and serves to do nothing but highlight a drop in quality of storytelling... or maybe the quality was never really there. Richard Knaak has a lot to answer for.

you're not wrong, but there is much more to the emerald dream. It is using that blueprint that Ysera, her flight and the night elven druids have guided the evolution of the world. there are many aspects of the Emerald dream, and many secrets about it, we do not fully understand it, nor does even Ysera. In Stormrage, we see Malfurion develop a mastery of it that seems to surpass even that of Ysera.

No, as far as I know they haven't. The green Dragonflight remained mostly in the dream and they guarded the dreamers. True the druids learn something in the emerald dream but it is never mentioned they use these power to influence the evolution on Azeroth ,there is a race that rivals the achievements of the night elves people and that are the trolls.

Last edited by Combatbulter; 2013-02-17 at 01:18 PM.

He who sees his own doom can better avoid its path. He who sees the doom of others can deliver it.

Couldn't do that....too many complaints about "heavily borrowing from other sources" already aimed at WoW.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

... there are lots of different types of players, with different amounts of time to play, and different tastes for the content and difficulty and time commitment they want to give to any of those pieces of content. The person that plays for an hour or so a few times a week is playing the same game as the person that plays five hours every night.....

i don't think there is any original concept in wow. blizzard borrow heavily from popular culture, it's how they throw it together that's interesting.

and combatbutler, have you never realized what the night elves do in the Emerald dream? it's mentioned several times. They don't just sleep, they aid Ysera and her flight in guiding the evolution of the world, a part of which is aimed at fixing the corruption from the legion and restoring a lot of what was lost. According to blizzard anyway, i'm pretty sure you don't know everything about warcraft lore, so don't be difficult just because someone mentions something you haven't come across yet, go do your research, and as others have said, don't just rely on wowpedia, it does not contain everything.

the story is largely original, but it heavily borrows from others, it's what we like about warcraft because it borrows the nicest bits, and then usually puts nice twists into them. I think it is accusations like that that made Metzen feel he had to change the night elves from being the oldest race, to just an off shoot of trolls. like i mentioned earlier, and the breadcrumbs showing this are there to see, the change in the troll model to look more night elven just before wow's release was one example, then the release of troll lore which now was all of a sudden before the sundering when previously it had been post sundering etc. All this and more point that it was not the original intention or direction of the night elves, but was later made to be so, probably because Metzen felt they were too Tolkein-esque or was been teased that his story was not original at all. Shame, because though a fan of many fantasy genres, including Tolkein and having read much in this area, I , as welll as many people did like what we read and experienced in warcraft 3, especially on the night elves, but not just them, zombies and undeath plagues aren't new either, but we liked the whole story. And truth be told, its the new changes he has been making that we don't like.

i don't like Elves coming from trolls, it doesn't fit the original introdouction which i liked, I don't like this trashing of the race either and the bad writing. Id on't like the focus being switched back to just humans and orcs, not just in the quantity of time devoted to them but also the feats and worse the neutering of other races like the night elves or the sheer neglect of them. I liked warcraft for what it was, i was under no illusions that it borrows heavily from everything, but i liked how it was thrown together, i liked how the bvideogame took time to add starting areas for each race and devleop them somewhat rather than take the easy option of focus on one theme and just let us have different skins.

all the changes are attempts to "be original" - but instead he just ended up messing up everything his fans liked about night elves. truth be told, we didn't much care that wo borrow s from other stuff, i mean the whole things, orcs/tauren/elves, dwarves, goblins/gnomes/eredar demons/gods/spirits etc even humans none of these are original, not one. and we don't care

we like that they are there, we like how they brought them together. we like the stories, or at least we liked. when you start changing things just to prove a point and then end up doing a bad job of it especially when it doens't make sense, you just end up pissing us off. It still makes no sense given the intorduction of the night elves, that they are from trolls, even though they have done a lot of work to bring us round to that, what makes even less sense is how the night elves are now bumbling idiots too. making a further twist on them, oh, the elves of warcraft are not all a cleverwise and noble lot, they're actually a bunch of idiots.

i think he may have mistaken the elf hate in some of the blizzcon fans to mean that the fans genuinely hated the elves, not realizing that the vast majority of the player pop actually likes them - an obvious clue should be how many flocked to play them despite their bad animations - these players liked the stuff about them that came before, now they're changing it, it is no surprise no one likes the new night elves of the post cataclysm era. they're rubbish and they're even less believable than before, have little praiseworthy of them and nothing noteworthy, altogether irrelevant and quite the opposite of the same race we saw defeat the legion again in warcraft 3, every bit a major player if not more so than humans and orcs in the story.

it seems to me that Metzen and co have abandoned the higher quality for lesser quality.

which is why i never stated they were identical, something people are putting in my mouth, i was very careful throughout this topic to point out what was similar about them, always stating that it is how tolkein portrays very long lived and well accomplished beings is what the blizzard writers should take note off

my whole arguement is that they are writing the night elves very poorly. when you look at Tyrande in wolfheartor in MoP, she's an idiot, her actions, and those of the night elves you encounter in the horde questline of the kalimdor zones or even the alliance quest lines, do not resemble those of beings who have lived thousands of years long and accomplished great feats like defeating the legion, twice, winning satyr wars, war of the shifting sands, guided the evolution of the world, masked an entire continent physcially and magically, , evolved beyond simple mortal lusts of welath and land acquistion etc etc.. they've laid out the night elves history, and we liked it, i didn't do that, I didn't make the night elves, nor write their history, they did. It's there for all of us to see, they bragged about them in warcraft 3 and most of wow till all that troll stuff started coming in and cataclysm was released/ they made them immortal not I - they made them incredibly wise and powerful and fierce, with an almost savage but highly intelligent and organised discipline when in battle yet serene and civlised and well cultutured, when not etc. Then they go and give us cataclsym and you are like..wtf is this?

when you write such a background, you expect when you encounter them in the warcraft universe that they would come out much more like Elrond/Galadrial/Gandalf/Glorfindel/Sauron/Faenor/Saruman and co etc than they would the bumbling Tyrande. My entire point is they don't seem to know how to realistically write the character of such beings anymore (maybe because different writers are writing the plotlines now for wow where the original writer that did WC3 no longer does), so, those new guys should take cue from how tolkein writes roles and speech and actions for the like of Elrond and co and the other long lived wise beings of middle earth whether good or bad.

i am not saying they are identical or their stories are the same, i never did, just pointing out that we're getting a lot of rubbish for night elves which doesn't match the profile and makes the story seem rather stupid, and i'm quite impressed how tolkein has gone about portryaing and representing immortal/long lived wise and powerful beings, in fact he does do that better than most fantasy genres, and i expect the likes of Tyrande and co to have a lot more similarity to them in personatliy and action than they have shown her and her night elves to have.

Yes, yes, we get it. The Night Elves are immortal, the Eldar are immortal, therefore the Night Elves should act like Elrond and co. I will repeat myself : the fact that the Night Elves are immortal does not prevent them from making mistakes or stupid things. They secluded themselves from the world for 10 000 years. They know little about the world outside Kalimdor, and all is pretty new to them. They have to adapt to that world and their mortality. So of course, they will make mistakes. Heck, even the Eldar usually do not act like Elrond or Galadriel.

As for Tyrande, I actually think that her appearance with Varian at the Temple of the Red Crane was an improvement, since she was much more like she was in WCIII. At the Temple of the Red Crane, Tyrande is always berating Varian to attack quickly and lectures Varian on how he should lead (arrogance : isn't it a typical Eldar attitude?) : "If you want to lead the Alliance, you must learn to be more decisive, Varian!" Well, that's the Tyrande I know : reckless and hot headed. In WCIII, when she sees orcs and humans working together, does she send someone to, I don't know, talk with them, ask what they are doing there? No! She attacks straight away! In the Barrow Den, she frees Illidan despite Malfurion's opposition, killing the wardens. Let's say the results are not totally happy either. Most Night Elves in WCIII were just like that. Only Malfurion was the wise loremaster like Elrond.

The problem is not to see Night Elves lose or make bumbling mistakes. It's to see them lose so often. They should have a true victory over the Orcs in Ashenvale before the end.